The state, we accept, is a problematic institution, but since it exists it needs to be defined. Hence we would endorse Nettl's comment that, even if the state has a 'skeletal and ghostly existence the thing exists and no amount of conceptual restructuring can dissolve it away. we live in a society in which people who break (or who are thought to have broken ) laws are sent to prison in which armed bodies (mostly of men ) invade and defend territories in the name of sovereignty and self-determination, and in which the pursuit of order is intertwined (some think inextricably) with officially justified acts of force